Jesus Appeared to The Twelve

In this lesson, we move onto the next part of the creed: "...and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve..."

But first, let's talk about the Birds Aren't Real movement. Their website clearly lays the facts out. Basically, what they say is, starting in the 1950s, the US government killed all the birds and replaced them with "billions of sophisticated robot look a likes" to "create the greatest surveillance system ever imagined."

Obviously, everyone who is part of Birds Aren't Real is "in" on the joke. The joke — and it's dark humor — is that large groups of people are often willing to believe completely ridiculous things.

Why bring this up? Well, you're participating in an online community where we agree that a dead man was raised to life before he ascended to heaven. It might raise the question: am I part of the world's largest conspiracy theory?

The best answer I've seen to this question comes from Chuck Colson. He served as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon and spent seven months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. Here's what he wrote:

"There were no more than a dozen of us. Could we maintain a cover-up–to save the president? Consider that we were political zealots. We enjoyed enormous political power and prestige. With all that at stake, you'd expect us to be capable of maintaining a lie to protect the president.

But we couldn't do it... What we know today as the great Watergate cover-up lasted only three weeks. Some of the most powerful politicians in the world–and we couldn't keep a lie for more than three weeks.

So back to the question of historicity of Christ's resurrection. Can anyone believe that for fifty years that Jesus' disciples were willing to be ostracized, beaten, persecuted, and all but one of them suffer a martyr's death–without ever renouncing their conviction that they had seen Jesus bodily resurrected?...

No, someone would have cracked... The fact is that people will give their lives for what they believe is true, but they will never give their lives for what they know is a lie."

**We can enhance Colson's apologetic.** When we recognize that the apostles came from very different political backgrounds, from Simon the Zealot (a Jewish nationalist) to Matthew the tax collector (a collaborator with the Roman government), it's all the more remarkable that they remained united in their conviction that Jesus was alive.